New MacBook Pro i9 Slower than the old MacBook Pro i7

i took the bottom cover off my laptop and put it in tent mode. Keeps my 6700hq cool under full load. No more than 82C, even with the 1060 running.

I've had thermal shutdown happen twice since I got it 1.5 years ago.
 
What if someone reapplies the thermal paste? I redid mine a few months after owning my MBP and saw massive drops on both CPU and GPU.

They might as well just have the ability to disable Turbo in MacOS without 3rd party software.

Also keep in mind the default Macbook fan curve allows 100C core temps. Setting a far lower limit really helps and barely adds any noise.
 
Tiberian said:
99C in 3-5 seconds? Wow, that's some shitty fucking cooling system on that machine, good lord. I have an older Core i7-2820qm laptop and it idles at 50C but if I hit it with wPrime32 for 1 million places it takes 20+ seconds to get to 96C. I would think modern machines were far more capable and ran cooler, guess I was wrong.
Click to expand...

The fan curve on MBP's are not aggressive which means nearly instant throttling.
 
Not able to maintain advertised base clock under load for which it's marketed for (video editing) - isn't that false advertising?
 
After all the news articles, all the forums posts, Louis Rossmann videos, etc. People that use still use Apple for personal computing get what they deserve.

Because Apple IS this.
uFGFXvo.jpg
 
I like Macbooks and they are great laptops. i9 is should not be in laptop. The thermals are too high unless clocked lower.
 
DNMock said:
Ok, but why would you want to do high resolution rendering on a laptop though? Not trying to argue or anything here, I honestly don't see what benefit the laptop mobility would give to someone who does high resolution rendering for a living would be. Maybe low resolution rendering on the fly would be good, but big 4k+ renders are brutal. Having a dedicated desktop rig for that kinda stuff would seem like the logical course there.
Click to expand...

Megapost incoming, be warned... :D

As I said, professionals that are doing work in the field that can't or don't have access to proper desktops. I was just watching some videos from tech reviewers on YouTube about the new MacBook Pro and without fail every single one of them said they had just purchased/upgraded to the new MacBook Pros with the i9 did so for one primary reason: to be able to process their 4K+ video rendering faster, whether it was on the go or not. iJustine specifically said in her MBP i9 unboxing video that she does (or did) almost every single piece of her video editing and rendering on the 2017 MBP she owns but got the new 2018 MBP with the i9 and 32GB of RAM and 4TB of storage (she got it maxed out, obviously) because she wanted to do her video work faster, on the go, like in hotels when she's on the road or literally on airline flights where people want to watch her edit footage of herself over her shoulder (she mentioned that part in a video with MKBHD a few days ago).

I'm going to present an idea that came to me earlier today and I'm not sure if anybody else has ever caught this so bear with me as I explain it.

Note that with the introduction of this new Macbook Pro that Apple did something they've never done before which is couple it (in some respects) with that Blackmagic eGPU in the marketing and press materials at the same time. Yes the Blackmagic eGPU is optional, of course for a chunk of cash in addition, but... here's my thoughts on why it was released at the same time.

The Blackmagic eGPU is not for gaming, 'cause on Macs gaming is an afterthought, especially to Apple. The reason the Blackmagic eGPU device exists entirely is to allow for offloading of the video rendering processing from the laptop's CPU and internal GPU to something that can do that faster. That's the only reason that eGPU exists, regardless of what some might believe. It's for professionals doing serious work, and yes that could include some GPU-assisted data processing/machine learning/GPU accelerated activities, but in this instance, the reason it exists is to boost the video rendering and processing speeds of 4K+ high definition video content, above and beyond all other tasks.

Now that we have seen at least some verifiable instances of the new MacBook Pro overheating to very significant degrees which in some cases throttles the performance to lower than base spec performance which is really unacceptable for a"professional" piece of computing hardware in today's world, it's fairly obvious what's going on. There is no possible way that Apple and its engineers, some of the best and most well paid people on the planet, did not know about these heat and thermal related throttling issues - don't think for one second they haven't known about this issue for at least the past 4 months solid.

Does anyone else seem to realize that potentially the reason that Apple decided to introduce this Blackmagic eGPU at exactly the same time in tandem with the release of the new MacBook Pro is because they know the most popular use of such hardware is video rendering of 4K or higher resolution content and that the MacBook Pro simply can't do it at acceptable levels of performance without the assistance of that eGPU because of the throttling that they obviously knew was going to happen?

I wonder, I wonder...

The timing of this is just too precise. It reminds me of the iPhone 4 antenna fiasco: they knew there were going to be problems with the antenna, and even during the introduction of the iPhone 4 on stage by Steve Jobs himself the iPhone 4 failed consistently to maintain not only a cellular connection but also a Wi-Fi connection to the point where Jobs was telling people in the audience to disconnect and put their phones in airplane mode because there were too many people on the cell tower and at the Wi-Fi and the convention center where the event was being held (Moscone Center, iirc).

Of course all of that was utter bullshit and most of us knew it because the iPhone 3GS which was on the same stage in the same demo AND connected to the same cellular site and using the same Wi-Fi didn't skip a beat during that demo. Jobs even tried 3 other iPhone 4 demo models there on the stage and got really frustrated when none of them worked as he was hoping everyone would be sure they'd work, and that iPhone 3GS just did everything faster and without any connection issues at all. The whole "You're holding it wrong..." email thing from Jobs was just fuel on the fire, and funny as hell too. :)

So how does the iPhone 4 relate to this potential of the MacBook Pro and the Blackmagic eGPU? In my opinion, because Apple knew the iPhone 4 was going to have problems and because they were so far along in the production that they couldn't delay the release, they had that stupid "bumper" case thing that did nothing more than prevent contact with the antenna band and Human skin. The same situation occurred here with the overheating/throttling of the i9 in the new MBP lineup and so they scrambled to provide a solution, ergo the Blackmagic eGPU. Yes one might not consider it portable enough to take along in a mobile sense, but then again it is rather portable. See where I'm going with this?

In other words when they discovered the problem with touching the antennas and how drastically it affected performance they had to come up with a solution almost immediately hence the dumbass bumper case which only serves one purpose which was not to protect the phone: the one and only purpose for the iPhone 4 bumper case was to prevent human skin from touching the metal antenna bands and that's it.

And Apple was actually trying to sell those bands for $29.99 which worked out to like a 29,000% profit margin because those bands cost like $0.13 to manufacture. Of course consumer outcry forced them to relent and then they started giving those $0.13 "rubber bands" away (yes I know they're not made from rubber, please). Those bumper cases served no purpose aside from preventing Human skin from touching the metallic frame of the iPhone 4, that's it.

My personal belief is because Apple knew this overheating issue was going to happen with the new MacBook Pro powered by the i9 and knowing that professionals who were going to be using those MacBook Pros would be doing extremely high definition video rendering consistently, they also had to provide some kind of stop-gap solution to make sure that people would be able to actually get some work done hence the introduction of the Blackmagic eGPU to offload that kind of rendering task from the i9 or the internal GPU of the MacBook Pro and make sure it runs cool.

Makes perfect sense to me, can't speak for anybody else but that's how I see the situation.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Tiberian said:
Megapost incoming, be warned... :D

As I said, professionals that are doing work in the field that can't or don't have access to proper desktops. I was just watching some videos from tech reviewers on YouTube about the new MacBook Pro and without fail every single one of them said they had just purchased/upgraded to the new MacBook Pros with the i9 did so for one primary reason: to be able to process their 4K+ video rendering faster, whether it was on the go or not. iJustine specifically said in her MBP i9 unboxing video that she does (or did) almost every single piece of her video editing and rendering on the 2017 MBP she owns but got the new 2018 MBP with the i9 and 32GB of RAM and 4TB of storage (she got it maxed out, obviously) because she wanted to do her video work faster, on the go, like in hotels when she's on the road or literally on airline flights where people want to watch her edit footage of herself over her shoulder (she mentioned that part in a video with MKBHD a few days ago).
Click to expand...

Ok, that makes sense. Further damning to Apple for sacrificing performance for THINNZZZZZ aesthetics then assuming that is their target audience.

Appreciate the example and break down on that for me!
 
So modify the fan curve, problem solved. For rendering, only an idiot uses a laptop anyway. For those there are eGPU:s available. I would be surprised if Apple didn't fix the current fan curve in an upcoming update.
 
Tiberian said:
Megapost incoming, be warned... :D

As I said, professionals that are doing work in the field that can't or don't have access to proper desktops. I was just watching some videos from tech reviewers on YouTube about the new MacBook Pro and without fail every single one of them said they had just purchased/upgraded to the new MacBook Pros with the i9 did so for one primary reason: to be able to process their 4K+ video rendering faster, whether it was on the go or not. iJustine specifically said in her MBP i9 unboxing video that she does (or did) almost every single piece of her video editing and rendering on the 2017 MBP she owns but got the new 2018 MBP with the i9 and 32GB of RAM and 4TB of storage (she got it maxed out, obviously) because she wanted to do her video work faster, on the go, like in hotels when she's on the road or literally on airline flights where people want to watch her edit footage of herself over her shoulder (she mentioned that part in a video with MKBHD a few days ago).

I'm going to present an idea that came to me earlier today and I'm not sure if anybody else has ever caught this so bear with me as I explain it.

Note that with the introduction of this new Macbook Pro that Apple did something they've never done before which is couple it (in some respects) with that Blackmagic eGPU in the marketing and press materials at the same time. Yes the Blackmagic eGPU is optional, of course for a chunk of cash in addition, but... here's my thoughts on why it was released at the same time.

The Blackmagic eGPU is not for gaming, 'cause on Macs gaming is an afterthought, especially to Apple. The reason the Blackmagic eGPU device exists entirely is to allow for offloading of the video rendering processing from the laptop's CPU and internal GPU to something that can do that faster. That's the only reason that eGPU exists, regardless of what some might believe. It's for professionals doing serious work, and yes that could include some GPU-assisted data processing/machine learning/GPU accelerated activities, but in this instance, the reason it exists is to boost the video rendering and processing speeds of 4K+ high definition video content, above and beyond all other tasks.

Now that we have seen at least some verifiable instances of the new MacBook Pro overheating to very significant degrees which in some cases throttles the performance to lower than base spec performance which is really unacceptable for a"professional" piece of computing hardware in today's world, it's fairly obvious what's going on. There is no possible way that Apple and its engineers, some of the best and most well paid people on the planet, did not know about these heat and thermal related throttling issues - don't think for one second they haven't known about this issue for at least the past 4 months solid.

Does anyone else seem to realize that potentially the reason that Apple decided to introduce this Blackmagic eGPU at exactly the same time in tandem with the release of the new MacBook Pro is because they know the most popular use of such hardware is video rendering of 4K or higher resolution content and that the MacBook Pro simply can't do it at acceptable levels of performance without the assistance of that eGPU because of the throttling that they obviously knew was going to happen?

I wonder, I wonder...

The timing of this is just too precise. It reminds me of the iPhone 4 antenna fiasco: they knew there were going to be problems with the antenna, and even during the introduction of the iPhone 4 on stage by Steve Jobs himself the iPhone 4 failed consistently to maintain not only a cellular connection but also a Wi-Fi connection to the point where Jobs was telling people in the audience to disconnect and put their phones in airplane mode because there were too many people on the cell tower and at the Wi-Fi and the convention center where the event was being held (Moscone Center, iirc).

Of course all of that was utter bullshit and most of us knew it because the iPhone 3GS which was on the same stage in the same demo AND connected to the same cellular site and using the same Wi-Fi didn't skip a beat during that demo. Jobs even tried 3 other iPhone 4 demo models there on the stage and got really frustrated when none of them worked as he was hoping everyone would be sure they'd work, and that iPhone 3GS just did everything faster and without any connection issues at all. The whole "You're holding it wrong..." email thing from Jobs was just fuel on the fire, and funny as hell too. :)

So how does the iPhone 4 relate to this potential of the MacBook Pro and the Blackmagic eGPU? In my opinion, because Apple knew the iPhone 4 was going to have problems and because they were so far along in the production that they couldn't delay the release, they had that stupid "bumper" case thing that did nothing more than prevent contact with the antenna band and Human skin. The same situation occurred here with the overheating/throttling of the i9 in the new MBP lineup and so they scrambled to provide a solution, ergo the Blackmagic eGPU. Yes one might not consider it portable enough to take along in a mobile sense, but then again it is rather portable. See where I'm going with this?

In other words when they discovered the problem with touching the antennas and how drastically it affected performance they had to come up with a solution almost immediately hence the dumbass bumper case which only serves one purpose which was not to protect the phone: the one and only purpose for the iPhone 4 bumper case was to prevent human skin from touching the metal antenna bands and that's it.

And Apple was actually trying to sell those bands for $29.99 which worked out to like a 29,000% profit margin because those bands cost like $0.13 to manufacture. Of course consumer outcry forced them to relent and then they started giving those $0.13 "rubber bands" away (yes I know they're not made from rubber, please). Those bumper cases served no purpose aside from preventing Human skin from touching the metallic frame of the iPhone 4, that's it.

My personal belief is because Apple knew this overheating issue was going to happen with the new MacBook Pro powered by the i9 and knowing that professionals who were going to be using those MacBook Pros would be doing extremely high definition video rendering consistently, they also had to provide some kind of stop-gap solution to make sure that people would be able to actually get some work done hence the introduction of the Blackmagic eGPU to offload that kind of rendering task from the i9 or the internal GPU of the MacBook Pro and make sure it runs cool.

Makes perfect sense to me, can't speak for anybody else but that's how I see the situation.
Click to expand...
So... Your MBPRO, just got a hell of a lot bigger.
 
B00nie said:
So modify the fan curve, problem solved. For rendering, only an idiot uses a laptop anyway. For those there are eGPU:s available. I would be surprised if Apple didn't fix the current fan curve in an upcoming update.
Click to expand...

Thank you for proving my point, and for insulting all the working professionals who do video production on their laptops on the go because that's their particular workflow.
 
B00nie said:
So modify the fan curve, problem solved. For rendering, only an idiot uses a laptop anyway. For those there are eGPU:s available. I would be surprised if Apple didn't fix the current fan curve in an upcoming update.
Click to expand...
Fan curve?
 
Not looking good at all:



While everyone is saying the i9 has massive throttling issues, I would probably say it's more accurate to say "the i9 has massive throttling issues if the system it's used in can't keep the damned thing cool to sufficient levels when pushed to max performance..." which is a lot more useful. If the cooling system is adequate, I'm sure the i9 will do just fine but it's the cooling systems that are fucking things up, and Apple's quest for severe thinness and using the same thermal cooling system for both components - the CPU and the GPU - just means the throttling will be even more severe.
 
Tiberian said:
Thank you for proving my point, and for insulting all the working professionals who do video production on their laptops on the go because that's their particular workflow.
Click to expand...

It is painfully obvious that a laptop is not the tool for rendering.
 
Uvaman2 said:
Fan curve?
Click to expand...
First of all, if you don't know what a fan curve is - why are you on hardocp to begin with?
Second, the default fan curve allows for 100°C CPU temperatures which creates the problem with throttling. With a custom fan curve the CPU will stay within the proper operating tempareture.
 
B00nie said:
First of all, if you don't know what a fan curve is - why are you on hardocp to begin with?
Second, the default fan curve allows for 100°C CPU temperatures which creates the problem with throttling. With a custom fan curve the CPU will stay within the proper operating tempareture.
Click to expand...
I Post here I guess becuase I have not been kicked out yet... I suppose.
I asked precisely becuase this is HardOcp.
I know what a fan curve is.... in context.. such as at least : Fan response curve... Or Fan speed reponse curve.. Yes from your original post I was thinking could be something more complex, like even the shape of the blades as another poster joked about... This is the HardOcp afterall.. shapes and materials of blades will be discussed in absurd detail.
 
Uvaman2 said:
I Post here I guess becuase I have not been kicked out yet... I suppose.
I asked precisely becuase this is HardOcp.
I know what a fan curve is.... in context.. such as at least : Fan response curve... Or Fan speed reponse curve.. Yes from your original post I was thinking could be something more complex, like even the shape of the blades as another poster joked about... This is the HardOcp afterall.. shapes and materials of blades will be discussed in absurd detail.
Click to expand...
Lol no. Fan adjustment curve, the regular one. Apple seemed to take a bad compromise between slimness and quiet operation with the fan curve as it induces too much throttling.
 
I'm amazed at how many engineers apple has vs how many products it actually makes. Every other major PC marker is able to run updates to their lineups yearly.
 
Professionals in the field use 17" laptops for anything like video editing or rendering. Possibly with internal sli Nvidia mobile chips.

If you can do it on a Macbook Pro, you might as well just use an iPad.
 
A 45W TDP hexacore stuffed into a laptop with the thickness of the average Apple users penile girth... WTF did Apple expect was going to happen?
 
Uvaman2 said:
Fan curve?
Click to expand...

Using MacsFanControl you can set a custom temperature limit. Out of the box in MacOS and Windows, a Mac will keep its fans IDLE until it hits 100C core temp.

All Mac users should set it to 80 or lower.

Disabling Turbo Boost in MacOS and Windows also works wonders.

Using ThrottleStop to set a max turbo speed is another great tool.

Replacing the crap thermal paste Apple uses with something better is also highly recommended.

This is why I cannot recommend a Mac unless the owner really tinkers with their machine.

DejaWiz said:
A 45W TDP hexacore stuffed into a laptop with the thickness of the average Apple users penile girth... WTF did Apple expect was going to happen?
Click to expand...

This Mac can easily cool 80W no problem. The enclosure is not the problem.
 
Jim Kim said:
But "this" Mac is not easily cooling 45 watts, much less 80w.
Hence the reason for the video and this discussion. Or did I miss something.
Click to expand...

It cannot cool 80W if the fan curve only starts at 100C.... See my post above please.
 
opfreak said:
I'm amazed at how many engineers apple has vs how many products it actually makes. Every other major PC marker is able to run updates to their lineups yearly.
Click to expand...
It would be irresponsible for Apple to have yearly product refreshes. Sheeple will buy any product, no matter the cost or how outdated it is.
Bottom line, the shareholders are happy.
 
cyclone3d said:
Shouldn't that be the other way around?

Oh yeah.. gotta love Apple /s
Click to expand...

Oh that's ok it will lack upgradeability as well as have serious flaws where the keyboard dies from dust or humidity kills some chip. Some of the mac book pros back to 2016 had ram soldered on to the board and any of a 100 other stupid things. Compare to my hp elite-book 840 g1 that is as simple as it can be to upgrade. No screw driver needed to get to the ram Just unlock with the nice switch change ram. 4 Phillips screws and the hd is yours to upgrade. Need a new kb remove the old one with a few easy to get at screws. So screw apple and their over priced nonsense.

I use to remark at how easy a apple mac book was to upgrade. At one point in time you coudl pull the battery and get at the ram and hard drive for easy upgrades but now they make it as hard as possible to do including making it impossible. It is totally retarded
 
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Why does Apple use an i9 in a laptop when it can barely be cooled in a desktop? The same reason they used Xeon's in their desktops, because it's an excuse to bend over the uninformed and make them say PLEASE MORE while they pillage their.... wallet....
 
Every manufacturer does this. It looks like Apple went too far this time. The dell precision laptop line, which dell claims does not throttle, performs massively different when the fans are controlled externally. Cinebench scores are much improved and my photoview render times are greatly reduced when I use the laptop with the fans wired directly to the 5v rail. It is absurd that I have to manually reconfigure the picoblade fan connector so I can get the true performance out of the machine, instead of dell just letting the user adjust the fan speed. I understand that a dumbass can use the software to disable the fans, but many moons ago, the precision m4400/m4500 used to let the user adjust the fans from low to high with a special bios key shortcut. No more. I am still using an older precision because the new ones make the fans un-servicable without a full laptop disassembly. Manufacturers are making machines that are not serviceable and that have intentionally short-lived endurance. I'll just build a desktop /rant.
 
next-Jin said:
I personally think it’s the BIOS fan settings, once it hits 99c it’s full blast and drops to 70cish with the frequency collapsing down until it can remain stable at 70c.

If I turn off AIDA64 then re-engage with the fan at 100% it’ll stay at 3.7 longer but eventually still drops to 2.4-2.6 GHz.

Mind you it’s still boosting above it’s rated 1.9 but it’s definitely not a sustained 3.7 GHz like we get in desktops.

You have to remember these thin and lights with dGPUs and quad core CPUs (even the U versions) have a good amount of heat even at 15w. You can YouTube a few videos of the Inspiron 13/15 7000 series being taken apart and see a ridiculously small HSF setup.

I believe Dell (among others) could put another fan in there with one more fin area towards the back (the Inspiron 15 has the vents already) without to much increase in cost but I’m not an engineer.
Click to expand...


It's not really the cost that's an issue, it's the dumb urge for thinness and lower weight in products where is shouldn't be their main goal. If they put another heatsink and fan, it will weigh more and thus likely just into another category in the market or something along these lines.
 
zkostik said:
It's not really the cost that's an issue, it's the dumb urge for thinness and lower weight in products where is shouldn't be their main goal. If they put another heatsink and fan, it will weigh more and thus likely just into another category in the market or something along these lines.
Click to expand...

Eh maybe, if I’m looking at my Inspiron 15 7000 as an example it’s possible from then looks of it to just add another fan and fin area on the heatsink.

That heatsink is tiny and weighs almost nothing. Like I said the vents are there already.

With the MacBook Pro or XPS lines I’m not so sure because they use HQ variant CPUs and not the U versions and they both have 2 fans/fin setups.

Something tells me they need to goto 10nm or make the devices deeper allowing another 1/4 in or so of heatsink surface area. Maybe more. U version chips should have the current QM style cooling setups.
 
I did some quick calculations on a subway napkin and determined that if they made the unit 5 mm thicker they could have doubled the radiator size, used better heat piping, installed windier fans and increased key travel on the butterfly kb. Total cost per unit $7.32.
 
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Jim Kim said:
I did some quick calculations on a subway napkin and determined that if they made the unit 5 mm thicker they could have doubled the radiator size, used better heat piping, installed windier fans and increased key travel on the butterfly kb. Total cost per unit $7.32.
Click to expand...
Did you factor in the cost of that napkin as well?
 
Eickst said:
I stick to i5 as max on laptops, for heat and power reasons. Seems to work more consistently and battery lasts longer in most models that I've used
Click to expand...
Same. Its a laptop. Mostly office and web browsing.

Those tools who edit videos on them can still do it, just be a bit more patient. =^)
 
Eickst said:
I stick to i5 as max on laptops, for heat and power reasons. Seems to work more consistently and battery lasts longer in most models that I've used
Click to expand...

Well with laptops it gets all fuckey. There are actually i7s that use less power than i5s. Intel is really silly about the naming. It's annoying.

Personally I just buy a laptop with a stupidly large battery :D. The Gigabyte Aero 15 makes me pretty happy.
 
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Well... Intels chip seems to be a beast... When unleashed... I find it hard to believe that it would be an oversight how the thermal throttle stuff is set.... This is a multi billion dollar company with a small product lineup, that is updated ( relatively) infrequently.
I do wonder if they are specifically avoiding sustained heat releases by the chip inside that case/ thermal design.... It might be things get affected, fail too fast in the relative long term with large prolonged heat releases... Things like that.
 
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